The shortcomings and inadequacies of the written word are abundantly clear to me this morning, because Sarah Labanc got engaged yesterday. The world has shifted on its axis a full degree, I think.
It finally happened. The blue, brown, freckled wildflower with windy hair and perfect teeth and an afternoon sunbeam spirit found a friend for life. She made it, and that means we're all going to make it in our own way. As she tumbles into the unknown, gazelle-bounds into the grandest adventure she could possibly conjure, leaps off the oceanic cliff of all cliffs, she takes her dreaming, filled-to-the-brim, kaleidoscopic mind with her, and that beautiful gleaming pinpoint of hope will glimmer deep within my consciousness for eternity.
When I saw the small, declaratory rectangle on Facebook, the fuzzy edges of sleep were blasted like lightning from my head, and when my imagination had caught its breath, all I could hear were these words:
http://sarahlabanc.tumblr.com/post/39498753289/dear
http://sarahlabanc.tumblr.com/post/41561090655/dear
http://sarahlabanc.tumblr.com/post/37098669447/dear
http://sarahlabanc.tumblr.com/post/28557215230/dear (this one.)
I read them and wept without knowing why.
I remembered what she'd wished, and feared, and hoped. I remembered how I'd studied her like a painting and hoped those things too. And suddenly, inexplicably, I was terrified and needlessly protective. I scrutinized his Facebook page, this future Mr. Sarah. I was suspicious and hesitant to give in, like a child that has been given a puppy it didn't get to pick out at the pet store. Two things made me do it. One was a single shot in their roadtrip montage video. They were eating ice cream cones in the car, and he looked over at her impishly, and there was her girlish, whimsical dimple. This told me he too had a child heart, that he knew and loved the girl. The second was the ring. Plain, gold, elegant with a humble white opalescent stone, it embodied her spirit in a way no physical object will probably ever personify. This told me he knew and loved the woman, and in her entirety. I stared at the picture of them together- snow dusting their shoulders, beaming, her left hand curled against his sweater- and I could see their dimpled, blue-eyed children.
So she did it. She found her hand to clasp, her pair of running feet with which to plunge over edges. She has taken that great and magnificent step, and so we all must take our own, whatever they may be.
We can talk smart or just act a fool
...It doesn't matter to me
Because I know that I'll be with you
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